Could you share any personal lessons or stories from working with your co-founders? What worked, what didn't, and how did you navigate challenges?
Charles Huang
Here's a fun example. I started RedOctane with my brother, Kai. Pros: We've known each other our whole lives. I know how he thinks before I even ask. I trust him 100%. Cons: We acted like we were brothers growing up. We fought and argued a lot. I don't think we realized that it was terrible for our employees to see us disagree and fight. They don't want to upset one brother, so they would just avoid the work if they saw that we disagreed. Be aware of how you and your co-founders affect your team.
Kai Huang
Having a sibling as a co-founder is one of the hardest things to go through. Having a sibling as a co-founder is also one of the easiest things to go through. The challenge we had was that we treated our business relationship similar to our family relationship. Once we understood this issue we changed our behavior and things got a lot better for the entire company. I also worked with remote co-founders and this was too challenging. The remote co-founder can feel "left out" and it's hard to have critical discussions when a co-founder is not around to provide input.
Joseph Hei
Starting Orbit Baby with my wife would probably be the more dramatic and interesting story. I think what made it work is that we had some good boundaries and rules — for example, a rule of not talking about the business during or after dinner. We also tried to carve out different business responsibilities. It was a good lesson in general: if you're really building something with people, you need to trust them and let them do their thing. It's such a common problem for leaders to want to micro manage, and because it definitely does not work to attempt to micro manage your wife, you end up realizing it's a good lesson in how to work with your co-founders in general.